King Charles III sent to America as the UK secretly hopes ICE will indefinitely detain him…

I don’t need AI to write and email for me, I can do that myself.

I don’t need AI to add typos for me either, I’ve got that handled as well.

I’m a cis man, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but if I get encourement from a random person like this, I absolutely kick my effort up a notch and remember it for months-years.

I’d like think people might be able to tell the difference between “keep it up” or “you’re doing great” and a full on catcall, but I’ve never been catcalled so… ¯\(ツ)/¯

I used to feel like I had this all figured out, then I got older. All I know for certain is that I’m not often certain these days.

I’m an apatheist, if God exists, they made the universe how it is. If they don’t exist, the universe just is how it is. All we can truly know is what we experience while we’re alive. So the unanswerable and unsolvable question of God or God’s will isn’t worth debating. Just do your best, try not to hurt other people, and find what peace and joy you can while you can.

We are the adults in the room. If God exists, they don’t interfere with their creation in ways we can observe. Laws and moral codes only have the power we give them. If we don’t hold people to them they’re worthless. There’s no provable divine wrath, so it’s up to us to make things just.

Everyone understands this on some level, but it scares the snot out of some folks. The idea that every individual human is in some part responsible for the fate of the species is just too damn BIG. Everyone rationalizes and fantasizes this away to some degree, much to our detriment.

Randoml stuff:

There’s nothing shameful about an ordinary life.

Organized religion is rarely done right. Most often, it’s simply a way for people who fear being unexceptional to feel better about themselves. Far too often, it’s about control.

If you want people to join your movement, temper your moralizing with practical demonstrations of how it’s in their own interests.

Helping people support themselves wins more goodwill and loyalty than charity.

Garbage men, utility workers, health care, and teachers do far more for your quality of life and the success of the nation than police and military and we should treat them like it.

A progressive and inclusive civic-mindeness is what seems to be missing in so many areas of our lives. Be proud of your community and work to improve it.

So, so many problems are solved by letting go of the idea that we must be productive members of society and just giving people homes and food.

Offline and analog skills have real value in the present, not just in the apocalypse. Learn them, share them, and teach them for their own sake.

Literacy is the life’s blood of human progress. The measure of how great we are is our wisdom, not our technology.

Violence should never be necessary, but some people will force your hand. What you do at that time is up to you. But you should try your best to prepare for it ahead of time.

Everyone’s a saint until the rent’s due…

I’m currently working on making a graceful exit from a position I’m no longer comfortable with, so it’s hard to say what I’d do if offered a massive salary to put myself back into a similar situation.

I suspect that there are few ethically pure jobs out there, and very few alternatives that don’t feed into the orphan crushing machine somehow. So in my mind it comes down to striking a balance between what impact your position has, what level of control you exercise over what the company does, and what you can do outside of work to try and improve the system.

Are you willing to campaign and vote against the interests of your employer even if it means the possibility of being laid off or fired? Does supporting yourself financially provide a benefit to marginalized people by making the scarce aid they can find more available to them? Are you designing products or processes to increase other’s misery or just mopping the floor? If you quit, what impact would it have on the org as a whole?

I don’t think there’s a simple answer to this, and I’ve long felt that we allow our occupations define our identites to an unhealthy degree, so I’d rather judge and be judged based on one’s beliefs and actions outside of work than for participating in a system designed to force our participation.

“Papers”…

Shouldn’t that read “evidence”?

This is by design. May not have been in the original blueprint, but it was modified to be that way in one of the recent remodels.

We already have answers for many of the things he’s trying to address, but they involve taxing the rich and using that money to support and educate the masses.

It’s almost like there’s an ultieror motive behind his desire to improve things for us dumb poor folks…

Never underestimate people’s ability to ignore inconvenient information.

Freezing up can be a reflex sometimes.

And I didn’t contradict that.

Just pointed out that, and this is coming from the same source, it’s not the only thing that keeps morale up and that folks who have deployed before know that food service in a war zone can be spotty even with modern logistics.

EDIT: People are focused on food in this thread, but there’s a reason why mail service is mentioned in the headline with it.

Sorry if it offends, but communication with home (mail, internet, etc.) plays a big role in morale as well. A lot of soldiers like getting mail and hearing from their families, girlfriends, etc. It relieves a lot of anxiety to know that your loved ones are doing well. Don’t know what else to say.

Word from home and communication with people you love, especially in the era of instantaneous global communication, is a powerful thing. Not that food isn’t a motivator too, but you expect some missed meals and low quality as the ops tempo increases. Miss a meal and you’re pissed until you get to eat again. Jack up a guy getting video of his kid’s last ballgame and he’ll stay pissed even after he gets it.

Scarce and shitty food is one thing, but if you fuck up the mail (and these days the internet), you’re gonna have a really bad time.

Even characters that are presented as poor or middle class have homes, cars, and clothing that would well exceed their means in the real world.

You’ll have a show with a 20 something couple that are “just staring out”, he’s a mechanic at a small independent garage and she’s a struggling singer-songwriter. Without support from their parents they somehow have a 1200 square foot loft in a major city, brand new MacBooks, a top of the line TV, coordinated decor with no flatpack furniture, brand name clothing, and a late model crossover with all the options.

I know product placement is part of it, but it’s still bullshit and unrealistic.

Look. I’m an apatheist. I don’t really care. It’s one kind of BS or another to me.

But on one hand, you have a someone who has decades of experience and study in the traditions, text, and history of their religion, and on the other hand, you have an asshole who fucked a couch and is a useful puppet for Peter Thiel and a bunch of other billionaire sociopath fucksticks.

Pretty easy to figure out who I’d respectfully disagree with and who I’d just call a goddamned idiot.

I have a similar argument with my mother, who claims the tile and fixtures in her (very dated) bathroom are battleship grey.

To me, they’re a light dusky blue, as if you mixed a light shade of grey with baby blue, and they clash horribly with the truly grey marble around her sink.

This argument has existed for 30+ years without resolution.

Ha ha! He got DoorDash! He’s just like us!

Fuckin’ jagoff…

We already have that, and it has solved absolutely nothing while potentially making online surveillance and privacy issues worse.

The answer isn’t age-gating or ID verification, it’s changing how the sites themselves operate. Get rid of the idea of “driving engagement”, no more stealth ads, and no corpo, media, political party, or lobbyist accounts. Hold influencers and podcasters to the same kind of standards we used to hold journalists to, where they’re required to tell you when the’re shilling for some kind of shady supplement company or political huckster.

You know, the kind of shit any sane species would do with this sort of tech, but when have we ever been sane?

This is a wild-ass guess, as I’m no religious scholar, but Paragone’s profile pic appears to be a statue of The Buddha, the emoji may represent the way Buddhists hold their hands together when bowing.

Daily: Wallet, phone, house key with folding reading glasses and pill container on the chain, car key (separate because I don’t like the way the key chain brushes my knee while I drive with everything attached), a couple of those plastic flossers in a baggy, lens wipes.

Often but not quite daily: “AAA” sized penlight, small pocket knife w/ screwdriver and scissors, and multipliers.